Mudge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the geologist, see Benjamin Franklin Mudge

Peiter C. Zatko (better known as Mudge) was a member of the high profile hacker think tank, the L0pht¹.

Born in December 1970, Mudge graduated from the Berklee College of Music and is an adept guitar player.²

Mudge was responsible for early research of a security vulnerability known as a buffer overflow. In 1995, he published one of the first papers on the topic, "How to Write Buffer Overflows"³. He published several security advisories on vulnerabilities in Unix and was a leader in the full disclosure movement. He was the initial author of security tools L0phtCrack, AntiSniff, and l0phtwatch.

Mudge was one of the first people from the hacker community to reach out and build relationships with government and industry. In demand as a public speaker, he spoke at hacker conferences such as Defcon⁴ and academic conferences such as Usenix⁵. Mudge has also been a member of CULT OF THE DEAD COW since 1996⁶.

He was one of the seven L0pht members who testified before a Senate committee in 1998 that they could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes⁷. When L0pht was acquired by @stake in 1999, he became the vice president of research and development and later chief scientist⁸.

In 2000, after the first crippling internet distributed denial of service attacks, he was invited to meet with President Clinton at a security summit alongside cabinet members and industry executives⁹.

After leaving @stake in 2002¹⁰ he disappeared from the infosecurity scene for a few years before resurfacing as a technical advisor to "insider threat" company, Intrusic ¹¹.

In 2004, he became a division scientist at government contractor BBN Technologies ¹², where he originally worked in the 1990s, and also joined the technical advisory board of NFR Security ¹³.

[edit] Notes

• Note 1: Source: "Security Scene Errata". [1]
• Note 2: Source: "NNDB Entry for Mudge". [2]
• Note 3: Source: "How to Write Buffer Overflows". [3]
• Note 4: Source: "DEF CON V Archives". [4]
• Note 5: Source: "An Interview with Mudge". [5]
• Note 6: Source: "CULT OF THE DEAD COW || Team Bio". [6]
• Note 7: Source: "U.S. Senate Press Release: HEARINGS ANNOUNCED ON COMPUTER SECURITY FAILURES IN GOVERNMENT". [7]
• Note 8: Source: "The L0pht, renowned 'hacker think-tank,' to join @stake". [8]
• Note 9: Source: "Clinton fights hackers, with a hacker". [9]
• Note 10: Source: "The Demise of @Stake?". [10]
• Note 11: Source: "Intrusic: Intrusic Team". [11]
• Note 12: Source: "Hacker 'Mudge' Returns to BBN". [12]
• Note 13: Source: "NFR Security Adds Leading Security Industry Experts to Technology Advisory Board". [13]